


Hold So Tight

by Arsenic



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22429105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: Augustinia, the eldest of their children, has just turned thirteen.  Laurent is handling it.  He is.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 173
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Hold So Tight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MemeKon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MemeKon/gifts).



> Hi giftee, I really wanted to write in this fandom, and I liked your likes. I'm not going to go so far as to say I'm certain this fic is gonna work for you, so really, just thanks for giving me the idea and I HOPE it scratches at least some of your itch.
> 
> Unbeta'ed due to treat status.

In a way, Damen had been waiting for this to happen. Not in the sense that he’d expected Laurent to fall apart, as that was not something Laurent did. No, Laurent quietly ate away at himself, one harsh, acidic bite at a time, until he was supporting himself through nothing but bones, skin, and sheer willpower. Thankfully, even Laurent couldn’t fully force himself to stop having nightmares.

His nightmares, even after all these years, were still quiet little things: a catch of breath, a stiffening of his muscles. Sometimes Damen missed the nightmares, slept through them, but he’d been watching. After all, Augustinia had celebrated her thirteenth birthday less than a week earlier. Damen had probably missed some of the signs if he was only catching it now.

He woke Laurent with a soft call of his name. Laurent went still and then breathed out, “Go back to sleep.”

“Certainly, right after you talk to me,” Damen said calmly.

“Damianos—”

“Nia is thirteen. Look at me and tell me that’s not making every unseen scar your uncle left on you, _I_ left on you, not ache. Do that, and I will roll over and go straight back to sleep.”

Laurent opened his mouth, his eyes holding Damen’s. Damen waited. Laurent said, “I hate you.”

“Of course, sweetheart.”

Laurent rolled out of bed and padded to the balcony. Damen followed. They were at the palace in Delfeur, so while the early spring was not nearly as warm as it would have been in Ios, it didn’t have the bite of Arles, either. Damen swiped a robe on his way and wrapped it around Laurent, along with his arms.

“She’s safe. They are all safe,” he said, referring to the three of their children, Augustinia being the eldest. “Even should the worst happen to us, they have Berenger, Nik, Jord, Pallas, and Lazar. Even Ancel would make certain they were taken care of, in the unlikely situation where that became necessary. And that’s not even touching on the Vaskian clan of Adrien’s and Arne’s mother.”

Augustinia had been seven, Laurent barely coronated, when a family had come to Arles with a child who looked on the edge of starvation and a story about having been given her by a woman of a noble house seeking to hide that she’d had a bastard. With the royal prince. Who’d been dead by the time the child—a _girl_ , to add insult to injury—was birthed. Damen had looked at the child and seen the specter of his husband.

Laurent had looked at the child like he was watching a ghost, and even if the story had been a lie, Damen wouldn’t have been able to leave her with these people, who were so clearly disinterested in her as anything other than free labor and a possible payout. He could only be glad the family had never thought to try and present her to the Regent. 

By that time, unbeknownst to Damen, Laurent had already bargained for the twin boys born to one of the Vaskian women Damen had serviced.

Laurent had told Damen he thought he knew who Augustinia’s mother was. He felt certain Auguste had been planning to marry her. Watching the girl sleep that first night with them, cleaned up but still too small for her age and covered in marks left by adult-sized hands, he’d said, “Gus had terrible taste in women.”

Damen had kissed him lightly, and not said, “We really did have quite a bit in common.”

It had taken almost three years of struggle to make her believe that they would not, for any reason, send her away. She was the legal heir to Laurent’s crown while the boys were fated to share Damen’s. The joining of the kingdoms had been codified in ways that left the crowns intact, merely connected. 

And now she was thirteen, angry and temperamental and brilliant and painfully shy. She rode horses with the skill of Laurent, and kept the peace between her brothers in a manner reminiscent of Damen. And while Damen could not help but still see the underfed child they’d been handed when he looked at her now and then, he had noticed that she was becoming softer, beginning to grow into what would one day be a woman’s body. Not for a while, though.

Laurent, he imagined, saw a child who had nothing but two very mortal men between her and the type of nightmares that stalked him. But they had been so, so careful to make certain that the children would be safe and cared for should they be assassinated, be forced into war with other nations, even should there be some type of military coup. There were plans upon plans upon plans for the children.

Damen wasn’t surprised by Laurent’s fear.

Into the silence of the night, Laurent said, “There is no safety, not really, you know that.”

“I do,” Damen agreed. “But I also know that there was such a small chance of what we have. Of our love, our family, this kingdom. Infinitesimal. And yet we have it. Because you held to what was important, and I held to you, and we will do _anything_ to keep the children safe and happy, and we have not yet failed when we put our all to something.”

“That is not an argument, and well you know it.”

“Is it not?” Damen murmured, swaying a bit with the early-morning breeze.

“No, lover, it is not,” Laurent replied, but the syllables were not sharpened in his normal fashion when falling back upon that particular sobriquet.

“That is not an evisceration I hear.” Damen paused. “Sweetheart.”

Laurent laughed, turning his head into Damen’s chest. “Can we just…go see that they are sleeping in their beds?”

“Of course we can,” Damen said, kissing the crown of Laurent’s head, and slipping a hand into his. “And we can wake them up and make them eat breakfast with us.”

“They’re going to complain vociferously,” Laurent said.

“You saying you don’t want to do just that?”

“That was not what I said, not at all.”

Damen squeezed his hands. “No, I suppose it wasn’t.”


End file.
